Miss Osborne took it for granted that, like herself, Carrie’s time was her own.  She invariably asked her to stay, proposing little outings and other things of that sort until Carrie began neglecting her dinner hours.  Hurstwood noticed it, but felt in no position to quarrel with her.  Several times she came so late as scarcely to have an hour in which to patch up a meal and start for the theatre.

“Do you rehearse in the afternoons?” Hurstwood once asked, concealing almost completely the cynical protest and regret which prompted it.

“No; I was looking around for another place,” said Carrie.

As a matter of fact she was, but only in such a way as furnished the least straw of an excuse.  Miss Osborne and she had gone to the office of the manager who was to produce the new opera at the Broadway and returned straight to the former’s room, where they had been since three o’clock.

Carrie felt this question to be an infringement on her liberty.  She did not take into account how much liberty she was securing.  Only the latest step, the newest freedom, must not be questioned.

Hurstwood saw it all clearly enough.  He was shrewd after his kind, and yet there was enough decency in the man to stop him from making any effectual protest.  In his almost inexplicable apathy he was content to droop supinely while Carrie drifted out of his life, just as he was willing supinely to see opportunity pass beyond his control.  He could not help clinging and protesting in a mild, irritating, and ineffectual way, however—­a way that simply widened the breach by slow degrees.

A further enlargement of this chasm between them came when the manager, looking between the wings upon the brightly lighted stage where the chorus was going through some of its glittering evolutions, said to the master of the ballet: 

“Who is that fourth girl there on the right—­the one coming round at the end now?”

“Oh,” said the ballet-master, “that’s Miss Madenda.”

“She’s good looking.  Why don’t you let her head that line?”

“I will,” said the man.

“Just do that.  She’ll look better there than the woman you’ve got.”

“All right.  I will do that,” said the master.

The next evening Carrie was called out, much as if for an error.

“You lead your company to night,” said the master.

“Yes, sir,” said Carrie.

“Put snap into it,” he added.  “We must have snap.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Carrie.

Astonished at this change, she thought that the heretofore leader must be ill; but when she saw her in the line, with a distinct expression of something unfavorable in her eye, she began to think that perhaps it was merit.

She had a chic way of tossing her head to one side, and holding her arms as if for action—­not listlessly.  In front of the line this showed up even more effectually.